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November 15th, 1959, two former convicts from Kansas State Penitentiary killed the Herbert Clutter family near Holcomb, Kansas in a failed robbery. The story became internationally known through the Truman Capote book, In Cold Blood. Barely a month before the 50th anniversary of the murders, one of the last remaining key characters in those events died. KCUR's Dan Verbeck knew him and recounts some of the life of James E.E. Post.

CSI: Mesopotamia, Dinos Run Hot not Cold, Nazca Demise, Singing Wings, Natural Nukes, Fact or Fiction.

Saturday’s Poem: “Cranberry-Orange Relish” by John Engels, from Sinking Creek. Saturday’s Literary Notes: It was on this day in 1851 that Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick was published, and it was a total flop. He had pored his heart and soul into the novel and he thought it was his masterpiece, but neither the critics nor readers agreed with him. His readers wanted a swashbuckling adventure story, like Melville’s earlier novels, so Moby-Dick was too heavy and allegorical for most people. Only…

Evidence shows that the Nazca people of Peru may have sown the seeds of their own destruction

We re in the living labyrinth of Harold Bloom s astonishing memory here. Click to listen to Chris s conversation with Harold Bloom (32 minutes, 15 mb mp3). The great sage of New Haven is walking us through the dark, dense maze of his first and favorite poet, Hart Crane (1899 1932). Take this as a sort of companion piece to go with Helen Vendler s reflections on her own closest poet, Wallace Stevens. There s a preview, too, of Harold Bloom s next big book, coming in Spring, 2010, just before his 80th birthday. Living Labyrinth: Literature and Influence will reconsider his famous grand argument in The Anxiety of Influence (1973) about poets and their precursors. But the joy of this conversation for me is the generous, melting demonstration of Bloom s theory and his method tracing (with never a glance at text or note) the spidery links from Crane s words and images back to Melville, Yeats, Milton, Spenser, Walter Pater, and The Song of Songs in the Hebrew Bible; with real-life anecdotes thrown in touching Hart Crane s friend the photographer Walker Evans, and his devotee the playwright Tennessee Williams. By the end of Harold Bloom s living-room performance, one of Hart Crane s most famous pieces, The Broken Tower makes a kind of music madly, deeply in tune with Bud Powell s Un Poco Loco. Listen for Professor Bloom s laughing indulgence when I tell him that, of course, Harold, the living labyrinth is you! A nice trope, my boy. Here, for before and after readings, is what Bloom calls Crane s death poem : The Broken Tower The bell-rope that gathers God at dawn Dispatches me as though I dropped down the knell Of a spent day to wander the cathedral lawn From pit to crucifix, feet chill on steps from hell. Have you not heard, have you not seen that corps Of shadows in the tower, whose shoulders sway Antiphonal carillons launched before The stars are caught and hived in the sun s ray? The bells, I say, the bells break down their tower; And swing I know not where. Their tongues engrave Membrane through marrow, my long-scattered score Of broken intervals… And I, their sexton slave! Oval encyclicals in canyons heaping The impasse high with choir. Banked voices slain! Pagodas campaniles with reveilles out leaping- O terraced echoes prostrate on the plain!… And so it was I entered the broken world To trace the visionary company of love, its voice An instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled) But not for long to hold each desperate choice. My world I poured. But was it cognate, scored Of that tribunal monarch of the air Whose thighs embronzes earth, strikes crystal Word In wounds pledges once to hope cleft to despair? The steep encroachments of my blood left me No answer (could blood hold such a lofty tower As flings the question true?) -or is it she Whose sweet mortality stirs latent power?- And through whose pulse I hear, counting the strokes My veins recall and add, revived and sure The angelus of wars my chest evokes: What I hold healed, original now, and pure… And builds, within, a tower that is not stone (Not stone can jacket heaven) but slip Of pebbles, visible wings of silence sown In azure circles, widening as they dip The matrix of the heart, lift down the eyes That shrines the quiet lake and swells a tower… The commodious, tall decorum of that sky Unseals her earth, and lifts love in its shower.

Happy Friday the 13th. We celebrate with music and stories about luck, both good and bad. Churchill's speeches don't pass electronic muster, while shorthand makes a case for itself. Also, trying to land a probe on a comet, and trying to get IT work for those with few prospects at all. And, listener Clarence Graansma tells us about his open source hardware project, the Pandemic Ventilator. Give to the podcast at www.pri.org/give.

The final conversation with the 2009 MPR News Fellows, a group of people from the community with diverse opinions and experiences. The topic: how Congress and President Obama are handling the economy. The conversation was recorded November 4 in the UBS Forum. (Broadcast 11/13/2009)

Two experts on end-of-life counseling talk about the realities of their profession, and what families should know before and during the dying process. (Broadcast 11/12/2009)

It's In The Loop Nov. 13, 2009. Featuring an interview with Minnesota Viking Visanthe Shiancoe, The Hill's Molly Hooper, Sanden Totten, and a new NewsTune.

Andrew Whitley is a baker and one of the founders of the Real Bread Campaign in the UK. He reckons modern bread is less nutritious, and is causing health problems like Coeliac disease and gluten intolerance.

Peter Griffin on the long-awaited World Health Organisation's Interphone study which explores the link between cellphone use and cancer. The full report's not even out yet and already people are questioning the way the research has been conducted.

Watch out the psyllid's about! It's a nasty bug originally from North America that could damage your potato crop. Colin Walker and MAF's Karen Pugh looks at how home gardeners can keep the psyllid at bay.

We get flour and water and a bit of free range bacteria together with Maggie Forest. It's an easy way to start a sourdough and make your own tasty bread.

Sarah di Gregorio lives in New York where smoking in city parks and on beaches could soon be banned. Also millions of car rego stickers are falling off windscreens due to faulty glue. It's become a political issue!

A new thriller from author and journalist Masha Hamilton takes readers inside the mind of a terrorist contemplating an attack in New York, as his mother and girlfriend try to figure out how to stop him. (Broadcast 11/13/2009)

What if you could imprint every bullet with the unique signature of the gun which fired it? That's the goal of California's bullet microstamping law, which takes effect in 2010. But does microstamping work? Scientists studying the technology say it will produce more false hopes and high costs than evidence. Supporters say that victims, families, and investigators deserve all the help they can get.

Local, organic, fair trade... Consumers looking for a sustainable diet face a lot of choices and recently, another one has been added to the list: low-carbon. But it turns out reducing your meal's carbon footprint isn't so easy.

For the past three years, the California Academy of Sciences, the oldest natural history museum in the West, has been housed in a temporary building in downtown San Francisco. Now the Academy is moving into a new, 400,000-square foot green building in Golden Gate Park. But when the residents are fish, penguins and millions of scientific specimens, moving in is no simple task.